People with Noah’s Syndrome adopt pets excessively and pathologically. This obsessive compulsive disorder can be managed with appropriate therapies.
- In Pas-de-Calais, a family had about fifty cats in a single house.
- The members of this household were certainly suffering from Noah syndrome.
Have you ever heard of Noah Syndrome? It is an obsessive compulsive disorder (OCD) which consists, for those who are affected, in adopting a lot of pets… Indeed, these patients accumulate them in a pathological and excessive way. In the Pas-de-Calais, for example, a volunteer from “SOS chats Étaples” recently alerted the municipality of the city on the case of a family who lived with more than fifty cats. She believes that the members of this household were precisely affected by this pathology.
The certainty of doing a good deed
With Noah’s syndrome, patients adopt pets for the certainty of doing a good deed. However, the larger the number, the more the quality of life of these little companions – generally canines or felines – decreases. Especially since it represents a very important investment (food, veterinarian…) that the owners are not always able to assume. Indeed, if we take the case of this family of Étaples, it seems difficult to imagine that they can take care of 50 cats at the same time.
Sometimes dramatic consequences
But this syndrome can have far more dramatic consequences. In July 2020, in Besançon, around sixty cats were found dead in the freezer ofa person visibly affected by this syndrome. Living conditions far from being optimal for the animals as for the masters, although the latter do not generally realize it.
Denial is part of the Noah syndrome
Denial is part of the Noah syndrome… However, for it to be taken care of, the patients – or at least one person close to them – must become aware of it. Cognitive and behavioral therapies can treat this pathology. These can be more or less long depending on the patient.
Cats and dogs are most often adopted
As far as statistics are concerned, women are more affected than men by Noah’s syndrome: they represent 75% of these patients. On the animal side, cats are the animals most adopted by these people, up to 81% of acquisitions, followed by dogs (55%) and birds (17%). Finally, patients affected by this syndrome have an average of 39 animals in their home.
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